Revised - 180. Fundamental Footprints - The Quiet Rise of Clarence Sexton

Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. I want to let you know sort of where we're at today. The opening part that we're going to play is our original opening from last week. We're not going to change it at all, but we want to begin by just saying that we realized there were some errors in our show notes. We had started this series back in the beginning of the year, and we had some interviews that come up. And so we had done the research for Clarence Sexton years or years, months ago. Somehow when we took those notes and we reformatted them, information got changed through our just human error. And we apologize for that. Several people have reached out and said, hey, some of these things were really wrong. Like you should have had the right information here. Some said, hey, it was a great episode. One thing that came across the entire time was that there was no scandal at Crown and that they stayed above board during all the time that Clarence Sexton was there, which is a huge high watermark. So we want to thank our listeners for calling us out and making us accountable for those things. We never want to produce wrong content or bad content. That's why we pulled the episode down. We spoke to different individuals. We've done the research. We realized the errors of what we did, and I think we know what had happened when we did that and just the information got crossed in our side of it. And so we're going to be re-recording today the second half of the episode, and that's what we're going to be jumping into here in just a minute. So after the opening intro and our opening banter, that was the same. So if you've already listened to that part, you can fast forward. Then we'll jump right into our episode today with Clarence Sexton. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. So miss me with your fence laws and your extra path. He sat with sinners, I'm sitting with saints. Sipping grace from the bottle, no room for fakes. I light one for liberty, toast to the king. Every ash a sermon, death has lost its sting. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, you set me free. Not for change, not for guilt, not for pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffing peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Ain't no shame in my rhythm, no guilt in my game. I ain't holier for hiding joy, that's religion's shame. They wanna shrink the gospel, make it tight and tame. But the cross crushed that yoke, it ain't coming back again. I got Romans in my holster, Gallatin's on deck. When they come with that yoke, I just show them the text. Don't submit again to slavery, read it and weep. Legalism looks holy, but it's wolves and fleece. I breathe deep like Spurgeon with a stogie in hand. To smoke or not to smoke? Bro, where do you stand? Cause if my freedom offends you, better check your heart. I'm dancing in the courtyard while you pick apart the art. I ain't under law, I'm under the blood. Not a slave to shame, I'm a son of the flood. No checklist, holiness, no fake veneer. Just grace that roars louder than your rules and fear. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffin' peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffin' peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Those lead on, not for sin but for him. Now I smoke rings like a hymn. For freedom, grace, that's the win. Lord and Lord, fulfill, let grace begin. For freedom, he set me free. Not for chains, not for guilt, not for Pharisee. Grace lit the flame, now I'm puffin' peace. Cigars and victory justified, released. Now here are your hosts, James Saifert and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a great time it is to be back with you this week. First week of August, back in the saddle. Man, it has been a wild summer. A great time, wide open. I think for the month of June, I was in my bed like five nights. In the entire month of June, we were going and we were blowing. It was great. Blowing and going or something like that. I don't know what the statement you say is. But yeah, it was a great time. And I hope you enjoyed our new intro song. I had a friend named Kiefer Likens who put that together for us. And so that's our new intro. We're going to shorten it. It's not going to be the full like three minutes that you get every week. We're going to shorten that down. But we wanted to play the whole thing. And we've got some great new ventures that we're going through. Brett, how was your summer? Man, how are things going with you? Man, my summer was great. I know you. I mean, you hung out at the beach for three months. You know, working on your tan. Three months sabbatical. Yep. You know, so, you know, called it in every Sunday. You know, you need a little break. So I appreciate that. Right. But no, man, things are going great with us too. You know, summer's a busy time. That's why we take a break from the podcast. We've got a lot of things going on. We've got camps and VBSs. And we had conferences to go to. And a lot of things going on. Now it's school starting back. And, man, schools are starting back earlier and earlier. We've got schools in our county that started back at the end of July. And it's crazy how soon, how shorter summer is getting. Summer is just getting shorter and shorter. Where soon there will be no more summer. But, yeah, things are from a massive evangelist crusade that I've been organizing. A lot of moving parts. A lot of people involved. All of our churches in the county are praying for it and helping out with it. And so just, you know, we're praying the Lord to help us pull that off. We've got Alex McFarland coming. We've got worship bands coming from all over the state coming in every night. And so we're excited about that. But, man, we are just ready to get back to work, get back into doing the business like we've been doing, preaching every Sunday. And now we are back on the For Freedom podcast. And so I'm glad to be here. Yeah. Brett, we were able to be together in June there at the convention and a great time that was there. We did a live interview on site with Luther Rice Seminary. And Marcus and the president there were able to talk through some things there on the convention floor. I just gave a report to the church just last week from the convention. Just giving them some updates on what was said and done. And we had almost every night guys over at the house and from the RFP fam and Q from our Israel trip from Georgia. He had a couple of friends that he brought over and some guys from the NC Baptist that I'm a part of were there. We had them come over. Every night was a great night. Just had people over enjoying our time together and fellowship and hanging out. And then for me, June, man, it flew by. We got back and then we went straight into camps. We had youth camp and kids camp back to back. And then Bible school, we just finished it. And then we've got our serve week coming up here next week. You said the kids starting back school. My kids start back school next week. And so this is the last week of them with me and all around. And so we are balancing schedules and figuring that out. My wife's starting back volleyball. So, man, it's been wide open. It's been fun. On top of all that, we're still selling cigars. We've still got a little cigar company that's going on. We've appreciated your guys' support. I think we've sold a little over 100 cigars this year. And things have been great. If you want to support us, you can go over to 1689cigars.com The collection there, you can see it. It's also on our website. And what a great time we've had with that. And Brett, something that has been in the works, really didn't even tell much with you about it until recently. But over this last probably six or eight months, I've been writing a book and being diligent in trying to finish it. It's been difficult. As Brett is trying to get his master and doctorate and PhD-level education and stressing him out and losing his hair over that, I've been working on a publication of a book. A year ago, John came up with the eight stages of leaving legalism. And we re-recorded that episode at the beginning of last year of just talking through those stages. And Lord just really began to delve with me. And I thought, you know, I'm going to put some of these thoughts to paper. And so I just started typing and started writing. 70, 80 pages later, we were finished. And I let a couple people edit it. Let John edit it because it was his idea with the eight different stages. And then he added probably 10 or 12 pages to the book. And so it's out on Amazon. We've had some little bit of sales, which is great. And we're talking with another publisher that's going to possibly be picking it up as well. So it's been fun. You can go check that out. It's at, it's, I'll try to link it to the show notes. It's from brokenness to freedom, a journey of healing and renewal. And just talking through how you can, practical steps of what it looks like when you go through that stages of healing of leaving a spiritually abusive environment. And just some practical counseling information for you there as well. I mean, let's go through the list. Your pastor, podcaster, author, and now music producer. I mean, put Tupac and Biggie to shame. We were getting there, man. This is, this has been a fun endeavor. So we did an episode, Brett, how long ago was it? Did we talk about AI on an episode? Oh, I don't even remember. We somewhere back first of the year, Brett began talking. We were talking about social media, AI, and, and that role in our churches, in our lives. And up until this point, man, I hadn't even really touched AI. And so I've started dabbing a little bit in it. I'm on a signal chat with a group of guys. We've got a little bit of crypto investment in the 1689 coin. A little throw that out there. If you, if you want to jump onto a fun meme coin that has no utility right now, when it's just been fun to see a bunch of Christians jumping in on it. And so a guy, Kiefer, he wrote that, that beginning song for us and put it to music. And I was like, dude, how did you do that? And so he told us. And so I had already put together a mock-up song that I sent to Brett, I don't know, five, six months ago of, we titled it Pastors Know Best off of the mocking of Mother Knows Best off of Tangled. And it was great to look through it. So I dropped that into this music producing app. And within like three minutes, it popped out like two or three songs. I sent him a Brett. He was like, dude, that's awesome. And so then I put together a couple more lyrics of one of Jack Howe's, one of me and Brett as podcasters and preachers. And it put together a couple things. And so we went ahead and I found a free distribution app. And hopefully, Lord willing, by the time when this episode comes out, if not this or next week, right now it's in moderation. The music is going to be out on iTunes and Spotify and everywhere you get music at as well. So just something fun. You know, I've actually put it underneath comedy. It's not even a genre. It's just comedy, having fun, listening to stuff. So hopefully we'll see what comes of it. We'll see what will come out of it. We may throw together some other songs, have Brett put together some songs, and we'll see what happens. Yes, it's fun. Some of them are hilarious to listen to. And, you know, it's really cool what you can do these days. It doesn't take much with AI and the tools that we have, chat GPT, things like that. You can do some pretty cool, interesting stuff. I know it writes the best sermons for me on Sunday. No, I'm just kidding. But we are, it is cool that we get access to this stuff that we never thought that we would have access to. But it is fun to play around with. Yeah. I just, the speed at which it does things and the speed at which things can happen, it's like unreal. My nephew, he just had two babies. He just had two twin girls. And he's actually, he works on music and stuff. And I told him about the app that I'm using. And he said, one of the hardest thing for him to do is, you know, he's got some music producing apps that he has on his computer. He said, but one of the hardest things for me to do is to lay my beats down. And he said, if I could use that app and sort of tell it the genre that I'm wanting and lay a beat down for me, and then I produce my own music and content over top of it. He said, that would save me hours and days of editing and things. And so for him, he's just looking at it as a way to not necessarily produce music, but produce the background content. He doesn't have a band. He's having these things. He's just putting stuff out. And so I thought it was pretty cool just to, you know, talk to a musician about it. And he was like, that's some pretty cool stuff. Oh, yeah. I've talked to programmers that use it to do, you know, what is that called? HTML or something. And they use it to write code for them and just save them so much time. And so, yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, absolutely. Brett, anything else about our summer? Anything that's happened with you guys? You doing well? Yeah, man, things are going pretty good. I think we reported everything. Just had a busy summer and ready to get back in the saddle and get back to business as usual. Yeah. Hey, I wanted to mention, if you listened to our last sermon that we dropped as well, that was Robert Smith. He was one of the convention speakers this last year. We did a phenomenal message. It was the last message of that 2 Timothy passage that we did when we walked through. And when he preached after he got done, I said, Brett, I think that may be the fourth sermon that we drop in our summer sermon series. One by Brett, one by me, and one by him. He's actually, Brett, I just saw they just released the convention speakers for the North Carolina Convention. He's one of the speakers this year for it, which is pretty cool. I may run into him like, hey, we used one of your sermons and it was a great time. So I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't, go back and listen to those. I know sermons are not podcasts, but for us, it's a good filler and it's a good way to give you some content without us actually recording. Again, with our busy schedules in the summer, when I say we were busy this summer, I barely had time to eat and breathe. And so it was busy. And so I'm excited about just slowing down for a little bit and being able to focus on this and some other endeavors, praying through the next year of calendar and church stuff. I'm just excited about what the Lord's doing. And we're excited about jumping back into our series. We ended the last season. We don't really do seasons on the podcast, but the last time we recorded with the fundamental footprints and we haven't quite finished that. Our goal was to finish that before the summer, Brett. And then we recorded a couple episodes and we had some interviews that sort of came out. And so it just sort of pushed our scheduling back, which is not a problem. And so we're going to pick up with the great Clarence Sexton. So Clarence Sexton was a pastor, a church planner, founder of Crown College. And in this episode, we trace his story from his early call in ministry under Lee Roberson to pastoring Temple Baptist Church in Powell, launching Crown College in 1991. We asked what the school and church model have meant for local church ministry and the wider, you know, independent fundamental Baptist networks. So, James, let's get into this. Where did he come from and how did he get into the ministry? I was hoping you were going to go, where did he come from, where did he go, where did he come from, Cotton Eye Joe? But we didn't get into that, but yeah, it's great. Yeah. He began, he was born in October of 1948, raised largely in Maryville, Tennessee. He did move around frequently in his childhood, but ultimately did land back in Tennessee. He was converted as a teenager, like a lot of young people in ministry were converted to that. And then he began his public ministry in 1967. He became the founder and president of Crown College when he came back to Powell, Tennessee after serving in various different locations that we'll talk about in a little bit. And as a leader, he emphasized the church-based training model. But one of the interesting things about Clarence Sexton that we learned was his broader worldwide ministry. He went from Powell, Tennessee. He's got a campus in England. And I was actually speaking to a guy, Brandon Jones, who we went to Israel with. He called me this last week and said, hey, love the episode. I want you to know about, and I'm glad we know about it now. We didn't find a lot of information about it, but there's these little schools of theology, schools of the Bible that have popped up. And they're basically little churches that have popped up in different places. And he's in Myrtle Beach. And he said there's a lot of these little school of the Bible that have popped up that are church plants out of Crown College. And one of the things that he said that was encouraging was just the non-scandals that had happened. And so very, very interesting to study that and learn that. But, yeah, he began his ministry in 1967 and was faithful until he passed away. And lots of people have been influenced through his ministry as well. So, Brett, as we continue through this, where did he get, where did he go? I'm sorry. How did serving with Lee Robertson shape Sexton's ministry model? We understand as he went through life, he began serving under him and looked at him as a hero. So how did that influence what he did in ministry? It had a lot of influence on the bus ministry. You know, dealing with the bus ministry was big, and they were big on the bus ministry. Schools of the Bible. So you have the colleges and whatnot, Tennessee Temple, the schools, and emphasis on practical church-based training. And then his growth work in Patterson, New Jersey, Madison Avenue, including founding an academy. So these are all things that he had worked with and had influence on his ministry. So the question then is, why return to Powell, Tennessee? And what did Sexton insist on when he accepted the call there? Yeah. And one of the things, when he went to Madison, New Jersey, the church was basically a dying church that needed revitalization. He came in and, through leadership, through the bus ministry, was able to see it very successful when he left. There's a picture on the website of hundreds and hundreds of people in that church building. So the Lord was faithful in blessing his ministry there. But when he returned, he required the church to start a Bible college. So he came back to Powell. He came back to Temple there is where he was at. And he said, listen, if I'm going to come back, we've got to have an institute. We've got to have a Bible college that's going to be training young people for the ministry. And so in 1991, they integrated Crown College of the Bible, and they integrated it into a training center. And then it was opened, discussed as he began. He started in 1999 with 69 students from 40 states. What I think is incredible, when we were at Champion, we started with a lot. They dipped down real low. Now they're seeing some good growth now. But in the 20-something years, 25 years later, the statistic was in 06, 07, they had over 900 students representing 40 different states and countries across the world. So there was a history of growth. There was a history of continuing to develop students. The facilities were robust. They began to invest lots of money and time into those facilities. Their music was conservative. And then they eventually started what was called the Robertson Heritage Center. Dr. Lee Robertson was very influential on Clarence's life and had given him lots of just strength and growth in his life. And so he really loved Dr. Robertson and modeled a lot. And after Tennessee Temple shut down, he integrated some things from Temple, from TTU, into Crown College of the Bible. And some of the mission statement changed a little bit because of what they had had there. And you can go and listen to David and Samantha Velasquez on the 26 letters. And they talk a little bit about that as well. But, Brett, beyond Tennessee, where did Crown trained students serve? And what ministries sort of grew out of his leadership? Well, what grew out of that was like hundreds of mission works, two-year schools of the Bible replicated across the U.S. and abroad all over. Students carried the Crown program to places such as the U.K. and Nepal. And let me say growing up personally, you know, Clarence Sexton, growing up, I looked up to the man a lot. He was someone I considered going to Crown for a long time. It was one of the places that I was going to go. And if I kind of I really wanted to go to Crown, but I was being pushed to go to Hiles. And I can remember going to youth conferences at and in the Crown area and at his church there in Powell and really looking up to the man, really admiring him. And, you know, growing up, I didn't hear a lot of negative things about Clarence Sexton. And that's just that's just honest reflection of of of what I've heard. Like we've said before, no, no scandals to talk about things like that. And so as we look into what he did and where he come from, he got a lot of things done. And we're just going to kind of I want to ask you this. How does Crown's model compare to other IFD colleges? What were the strengths and what were the limits? Yeah, absolutely. I think some of the strengths were the local church training. They had practical ministry labs. They had consistent discipleship pipelines, right? We we as young people at Champion and other places, discipleship was not a a model that we had talked about a lot. And I believe they worked diligently on their discipleship and what that was what that looked like. They grew into large multi-campus ministries, thousands of members. That was one of the things like at House Anderson where you were at, it was all one site church. Everyone attended at the First Baptist Church of Hammond. That was their big number. Crown began this sort of multi-site, multi-area location that was was helping plant churches around, which was really, really interesting to see that. And so something that they hadn't a lot of the other IFD colleges hadn't done before. As they sort of the the the negative side that you could say, some of the weaknesses would, of course, be some of the interviews we're going to have. We've got Brooke coming on. We've got another guy coming on next week to sort of share their personal time. But of course, their standards and the way they did things that was standard with all IFB churches and colleges help them to continue that same oppression of women. The standards, the standards, the extra biblical standards of legalism that we often talk about how we want to break free from those things and to have the freedom that the Bible gives us. And so we definitely have seen that. We definitely have heard that firsthand from different people we've talked to. And so we definitely see that there are some some big things. One of the things that was really cool is Clarence had had an extensive acreages that the church had bought the facilities. They had some camp facilities. And one huge thing that he had this massive takeaway from Lee Robertson was the significant bus ministry. Large bus ministry at Crown that that definitely reached hundreds and thousands of people. And so sort of our final takeaway, our final thoughts on Clarence Sexton today is he built a durable church centered ministry training model. I want us to understand that there are some fruit that comes with that, but there's also tradeoffs that sort of tightly integrate this college church system. As one of our interviewers say, they said was it didn't feel like it was a church model. It felt like it was a ministry college ran model. If the college students wasn't there, these ministries wouldn't exist. And that was someone who had been there years later. Now, the college and church may have the church may have started these ministries and the college just evolved into doing it. But that was a personal personal firsthand experience account of it felt like the ministries were mainly led through the college students. And then we want to say that many ministries we've looked at, J. Frank Norris, Howell's Anderson, Jack Scott, many different people that we've looked at. There have been scandals and pitfalls that have defined their ministry. In our study, over 30 plus years of Crown, there was not a scandal. There was not a pitfall that we could find that would have been a defining moment for the college or clearance. And I want to also say, Brett, in one of my studies, as I was looking through him just this past weekend, he actually attended a Southern Baptist convention back in the early 70s and 80s when the convention was sort of fractured with the inerrancy of scripture. And he left from there and he came home and he said the convention doesn't even know what they believe about the Bible. And so because they don't know what they believe about the Bible, I believe it's time for us to pull out from the convention and become an independent church. And so he led his church away from the convention because they didn't understand where they were at. Now, we understand years later, the conservative resurgence happened and the conservative surgeons brought the convention back to a conservative viewpoint of the inerrancy of scripture, the belief of the Bible. And I believe by studying his life over these last couple of days and sort of refreshing my mind with it, he would have probably been a Southern Baptist today if he was around the convention today and would have went to a meeting because of the way their stand was so similar to what it was at. And so he was very closely aligned with that. I thought it was interesting that he had been to one during that time, been to a convention during that time. My pastor grew it growing up. He was under the Lee Robertson era, Tennessee Temple University. And I believe he was trying to take our church from an independent church to a Southern Baptist church because when he left our church, he went to a Southern Baptist church. And a lot of what he did was sort of that high church model of the convention style of it. And so I thought it was interesting. What's your thought? One other thing that we've gathered from people that we've talked to personally, from comments that we've read on the RFP fam network, things like that. One of the things that kind of has been consistently mentioned is that as Clarence Sexton got older, he began to change a little bit. This is from people who've had one-on-one dealings with him, have told us that he would get a little less discreet, a little less tactful, a little bit more blunt on some things. In fact, the famous saying that was in the recovering intro, well, you're just stupider. And that did hurt a lot of people. But then there were also people that said that what was probably going on was he wouldn't have known about any of this if there weren't people whispering in his ear, telling him about these things, kind of painting a picture that, you know, these recovering fundamentalists, you know, they're worse than they really were. And so I do want to put that out there that, you know, some people said he probably had people whispering in his ear, telling him this stuff was bad. And so I kind of colored his opinion of it. But, you know, from all intents and purposes, he was sincere, I think. He did have some habits, some things about him, you know, very IFB type things that come standard with being in the IFB and being a man of God in the IFB. But, you know, I do believe he was a sincere person. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things that someone shared with me was they were with him in the earlier 2000s era, sort of when some of the big IFB leaders were passing away and he was being sort of handed the mantle of the leader of the IFB. And they said that in his response when people would say that he was very humble, he was very, like, non-deserving of it, and he never bragged that he was one of the main leaders. He sort of took a step back and said that. And so, yeah, we want to thank you for listening today. I want to thank you for your time today. Again, we apologize for the error in our last time. We want to take ownership and credit for that and know that it's never our intention to produce false information. It was just a mix-up in our notes, and we do apologize with that. Looking forward to the interviews that we have coming up in just a couple of weeks and then getting into the Tennessee Temple era and what that looks like with Lee Robertson. So until next time, to God be the glory. Great things he has done. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning. It has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. I will go to the For Freedom Podcast.

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